Smell the change: On the potential of gas‐chromatographic ion mobility spectrometry in ecosystem monitoring

Abstract

Plant volatile organic compounds (pVOCs) are being recognized as an important factor in plant–environment interactions. Both the type and amount of the emissions appear to be heavily affected by climate change. A range of studies therefore has been directed toward understanding pVOC emissions, mostly under laboratory conditions (branch/leaf enclosure). However, there is a lack of rapid, sensitive, and selective analytical methods, and therefore, only little is known about VOC emissions under natural, outdoor conditions. An increased sensitivity and the identification of taxon‐specific patterns could turn VOC analysis into a powerful tool for the monitoring of atmospheric chemistry, ecosystems, and biodiversity, with far‐reaching relevance to the impact of climate change on pVOCs and vice versa. This study for the first time investigates the potential of ion mobility spectrometry coupled to gas‐chromatographic preseparation (GC‐IMS) to dramatically increase sensitivity and selectivity for continuous monitoring of pVOCs and to discriminate contributing plant taxa and their phenology. Leaf volatiles were analyzed for nine different common herbaceous plants from Germany. Each plant turned out to have a characteristic metabolite pattern. pVOC patterns in the field would thus reflect the composition of the vegetation, but also phenology (with herbaceous and deciduous plants contributing according to season). The technique investigated here simultaneously enables the identification and quantification of substances characteristic for environmental pollution such as industrial and traffic emissions or pesticides. GC‐IMS thus has an enormous potential to provide a broad range of data on ecosystem function. This approach with near‐continues measurements in the real plant communities could provide crucial insights on pVOC‐level emissions and their relation to climate and phenology and thus provide a sound basis for modeling climate change scenarios including pVOC emissions.

Unravelling the functions of biogenic volatiles in boreal and temperate forest ecosystems

“…Moreover, warming and improved growth may offset inhibitory effects of elevated CO 2 on isoprene emitters and increase total forest isoprene emissions (Sharkey and Monson 2017). Continuous monitoring of BVOCs has been suggested to be used as one of the potential monitoring methods of ecosystem level effects of climate change and adaptation capacity of forest vegetation community composition (Vautz et al 2018).…”

“…BVOCs in the atmosphere are biological (stress vs. nonstress) indicators (Vautz et al 2018) that produce valuable information of tree condition and can be used to improve forest management. As climate is changing, BVOC emissions will change and eventually will help plants to adapt to new conditions.…”

Miniaturized Photo-Ionization Fourier Deconvolution Ion Mobility Spectrometer for the Detection of Volatile Organic Compounds

“…Drift tube ion mobility spectrometry plays an important role in explosives, chemical warfare agents, and drug detection [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] because of its advantages of great stability, sensitivity, fast response, low cost, and good portability. With the continuous development of IMS, solid, low-cost, and lightweight portable or handheld drift tubes have shown potential use in environmental monitoring [ 5 ], food safety [ 6 ], and drug analysis [ 7 , 8 ]. Therefore, the development of miniaturized high-performance IMS is of great significance.…”

Limitations of GC-QTOF-MS Technique in Identification of Odorous Compounds from Wastewater: The Application of GC-IMS as Supplement for Odor Profiling

“…Thus, highly resolved fingerprints of VOCs from liquid or solid samples can be obtained through GC-IMS which operated at atmospheric pressure and employed no sample pretreatment [32][33][34]. GC-IMS analysis has been extensively used in food and environment areas [35][36][37][38][39]. Attributed to its high sensitivity of small molecule compounds, application of GC-IMS may serve as a complement to GC-MS analysis.…”